Poverty Fiction

Poppy used to be an optimist. But after a photo of her dressed as Rosie the Riveter is mocked online, she's having trouble seeing the good in the world. As a result, Poppy trades her beloved vintage clothes for a feathered chicken costume and accepts a job as an anonymous sign waver outside a restaurant. As the summer unfolds, Poppy stops glorifying the past and starts focusing on the present. But just as she comes to terms with the fact that there is good and bad in everyone, she is tested by a deep betrayal.

Meet Rico: high school senior and afternoon-shift cashier at the Gas 'n' Go, who after school and work races home to take care of her younger brother. Every. Single. Day. When Rico sells a jackpot-winning lotto ticket, she thinks maybe her luck will finally change, but only if she—with some assistance from her popular and wildly rich classmate Zan—can find the ticket holder who hasn't claimed the prize. But what happens when have and have-nots collide? Will this investigative duo unite...or divide?

Laurel would do anything to turn back time - to tell her mother and grandmother not to stay home near the beach with a hurricane coming, to say no when her boyfriend, T-Boom, the co-captain of the basketball team, offers her that first hit of moon -the drug that makes her feel bigger than all she’s lost, to have been there for her little brother and her best friend, Kaylee, when they needed her, instead of chasing the moon - But she can't. All she can do is move forward now. And only she can decide whether to face the pain and joy that is a part of living, or follow the moon to numbness and probably death.

Few winter stories are more affecting than Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl. Written in 1848, and strictly speaking a New Year's Eve story, it showed so clearly then, as it does now, that the Christmas holidays do not represent fireside, food, and presents for all. This story never fails to move, yet it somehow avoids serious sentimentality.

Allison is in danger at home. Her stepmother has run away and her father is getting worse. So she runs away too and with no where to live finds herself hiding out, miles from home, in an elderly woman’s shed. But this woman, Marla, has dementia and doesn’t recognise her as Allison, believing she is an old friend from her past called Toffee. So this is who Allison becomes, morphing into a person Marla usually knows and trusts but sometimes fears and fights. Eventually Allison’s stepmother shows up, armed with a new baby girl, a new sibling.

A small prison cell in India holds an 18-year-old penniless waiter from a Mumbai slum. But Ram Mohammad Thomas isn't a criminal. He is under arrest for correctly answering 12 tricky trivia questions on the show Who Will Win a Billion? Reluctant to part with the jackpot of one billion rupees, the show directors bribe the police to arrest Ram, accusing him of cheating.

River Ryland is the girl everyone wants to be around. But this brave 13-year-old has a secret that's getting harder and harder to hide: she lives mostly alone in a ramshackle, single-wide trailer with a mom who drops in and out of her life.

Newbery Honor winner Joan Bauer's new novel will touch your heart.

When home is a car, life is unpredictable. School, friends, and three meals a day aren't guaranteed. Not every town has a shelter where a family can sleep for a night or two, and places with parking lots don't welcome overnight stays. Opin, his brother Emjay, and their mother are trying to get to Los Angeles, where they hope an uncle and a new life are waiting. Emjay has taken to disappearing for days, slowing down the family's progress and adding to their worry.

Jeremiah feels good inside his own skin. That is, when he's in his own Brooklyn neighborhood. But now he's going to be attending a fancy prep school in Manhattan, and black teenage boys don't exactly fit in there. So it's a surprise when he meets Ellie the first week of school. In one frozen moment their eyes lock, and after that they know they fit together - even though she's Jewish and he's black.

School is out for the summer, but not for 18-year-old Michael and 17-year-old Shelly. The pair of them meet while serving court-ordered community service, and both are driven by secrets and lies.

In this dazzling, hilarious, and heartbreaking debut, Joel Higgins grapples with the aftermath of a tragic loss as he tries to make sense of the problems he's sees all around him with the help of banned books, Winnie-the-Pooh, a field of asparagus, and many pairs of socks.

Always think in threes and you'll never fall, Cora's father told her when she was a little girl. Two feet, one hand. Two hands, one foot. That was all Cora needed to know to climb the trees of Brooklyn. But now Cora is a middle schooler, a big sister, and homeless. Her mother is trying to hold the family together after her father's death, and Cora must look after her sister, Adare, who's just different, their mother insists. Quick to smile, Adare hates wearing shoes, rarely speaks, and appears untroubled by the question Cora can't help but ask: How will she find a place to call home?

Hi, I’m Lyric. And I’m kind of a mess. ADHD, that’s me. I’m a high school drop-out, late everywhere I go, and one screw-up away from being homeless. I’m a loner, and I like it that way. After my mom died, I figured life couldn’t get much worse. I thought it might even get better. I should’ve listened to the rumors about evil spirits. About the angry, ancient magical creatures haunting our small Oregon Coast town. But did I? No. That was my first mistake. And it might be my last. ‘Cause now, I’m in a battle for my life.

Kim Fitzgerald-Trout took to driving with ease - as most children would if their parents would ever let them try. She had to. After all, she and her siblings live in a car. Meet the Fitzgerald-Trouts, a band of four loosely related children living together on a lush tropical island. They take care of themselves. They sleep in their car, bathe in the ocean, eat fish they catch and fruit they pick, and can drive anywhere they need to go - to the school, the laundromat, or the drive-in. If they put their minds to it, the Fitzgerald-Trouts can do anything. Even, they hope, find a real home.

One bright spring morning in the woods of France, a soldier, blinded by the war, is found by a little girl named Coco, and her older sister Marcelle. In return for their kindness, the soldier tells the sisters marvelous tales, each story connected to the keepsake he carries in his pocket: a perfect, tiny, silver donkey.

When you live in your car the way 18-year-old Eddie and his sister, Maya, do, the rules are pretty simple: lay low, trust no one, and make sure you have plenty of duct tape on hand. But Maya is growing up fast. She's forgetting how to play the game, and Eddie is finding it harder and harder to keep them both safe from the outside world. When their lives suddenly become complicated through a mistake Maya makes, Eddie begins to lose his composure. And why wouldn't he? He hasn't had time to address his own emotional wounds.

As he prepares to recite the Declaration of Independence before his eighth grade social studies class in California, the thing Francisco has feared for 10 years finally happens. La migra, the immigration police, come to his classroom and pick him up for deportation to Mexico. Soon back in the United States with a "green card", Francisco struggles through adolescence, working two or three jobs a day and striving to excel at school.

We will dance on the cliffs of Brooklyn. Maggie’s Door is the story of the journey from Ireland to America told by both Nory and her neighbor and friend Sean Red Mallon, two different stories with the same destination - the home of Nory’s sister, Maggie, at 416 Smith Street, Brooklyn, America. Patricia Reilly Giff calls upon her long research into Irish history and her great powers as a storyteller in this deeply involving, riveting stand-alone companion novel to Nory Ryan’s Song.

When Michelle runs away from her drug-addicted mother, she has just enough money to make it to New York City, where she hopes to move in with a friend. But once she arrives at the bustling Port Authority, she is confronted with the terrifying truth: She is alone and out of options. Then she meets Devon, a good-looking, well-dressed guy who emerges from the crowd armed with a kind smile, a place for her to stay, and eyes that seem to understand exactly how she feels. But Devon is not who he seems to be.